


Hallucinations

by IncendiaGlacies



Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Hallucinations, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-12
Updated: 2020-05-12
Packaged: 2021-03-03 05:07:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,177
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24139372
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IncendiaGlacies/pseuds/IncendiaGlacies
Summary: “What do you want now?” Gideon whispered hoarsely, staring at the figure in the dark. She knew who he was, knew who he was meant to be. Ever since she had turned human, she was haunted by the spectre, unable to escape his cruelty as he taunted her.
Relationships: Gideon/Rip Hunter
Comments: 8
Kudos: 13





	Hallucinations

**Author's Note:**

> I practically made myself cry writing this...

“What do you want now?” Gideon whispered hoarsely, staring at the figure in the dark. She knew who he was, knew who he was meant to be. Ever since she had turned human, she was haunted by the spectre, unable to escape his cruelty as he taunted her.

* * *

_“Nothing but a bunch of code. Ones and zeros. You have no emotion. You feel nothing. You are nothing.”_

No matter how many times Gideon begged him to stop, begged her broken mind to cooperate, Rip was always there. Right in front of her, reminding her how unworthy she was.

_“Look at you, alive, strutting about. Proud of yourself aren’t you?” he sneered._

_She dropped her spoon into the cereal. “Stop it,” she whispered._

_“My family died and you live. You don’t deserve it.”_

_“Yes, I do,” she said meekly. She tried to remember her Rip, the real Rip._

_“You should have died instead.”_

As she walked the halls, worked on the ship, he was everywhere. His constant presence, telling her everything she did wrong.

_“You can’t even fix her anymore. Now that you’re human.”_

_“I can.” Gideon gritted her teeth and worked on the wires._

_“Poor little Gideon, all alone. That’s always been the story, hasn’t it?”_

_“I have the ship.”_

_“She’s not yours. She never will be.”_

Gideon had tried to fix herself. She knew it wasn’t real, that he wasn’t real. She had done everything in her power to remember. But as the days passed, the hallucinations grew stronger, taking over her memories.

_“I never should have fixed you the first time. I should have scrapped you.”_

_“Then why didn’t you?” she asked tiredly. Her fight was wearing thin. Despite the alarms on the ship going off, telling her he wasn’t real…but wasn’t he? What if Rip had always thought it? Never wanted her after all??_

_There was no answer._

_“He’s not real,” she told herself. But what if his words were?_

There was nothing she could do. Nowhere she could go to be free of him.

_Gideon stared down at the grave and placed the bouquet of flowers on the dirt. “I miss you.”_

_“My, you’ve gotten good at lying, haven’t you?”_

_“It’s not a lie. I miss him.”_

_“He wasn’t yours,” Rip reminded her cruelly. “Did you really think he loved you? You were nothing to him.”_

_“He-he called me Gigi.” Gideon’s vision blurred with tears. “He-”_

_“He pitied you at best,” Rip mocked her._

_Gideon shook her head. It wasn’t true. It wasn’t true!_

_“Look at the graves, Gideon. No room for you. You’re not family. You’re not anything.”_

She was nothing. Absolutely nothing.

_“Unloved, unwanted, unneeded.”_

_Gideon covered her ears and screamed. “Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!”_

_Tears streamed down her face and she banged her head so hard against the walls she saw stars. Rip bent down in font of her, eyes lifeless and cold._

_“Someone needs to tell you the truth, Gideon.”_

_“It’s not true!”_

_“It is. Why do you think you had so many Captains? You couldn’t keep any of them. They died because of you. I died because of you.”_

_Gideon’s breath grew short, the world spun around her as her chest tightened. A heart wrenching scream tore from her throat. She threw the glass at him, curled into fetal position, and closed her eyes shut. It wasn’t real, it wasn’t real, it wasn’t real._

_When she opened her eyes she was alone again._

Logically, Gideon knew what it was. Simply a mental manifestation of her injuries turning human, a figment of her imagination. Sometimes, she could keep reality separate, but the days blurred and it became harder. Even when she had tried to fix herself in the medbay, he wouldn’t let her.

_“You think that will work? Really?”_

_“It has to.” She didn’t know why she always responded to him. He wasn’t real. “I’m going mad,” she whispered._

_“Crazy. All the more reason to pull the plug, don’t you think?”_

_“I’m not listening to you.” Her Rip would want her to go on. He would want her to find a way, to be brave and-_

_“It would make us all so much happier.”_

She watched as many old home videos as she could. Tried to remember Miranda’s laugh lines, Jonas’ laugh, and her Captain. Her real Captain. The sweet wonderful Captain.

_“You’re in the way.” Gideon glared at the man in front of her, hazy like a hologram. Because he wasn’t real, she reminded herself._

_“Lies, they’re all lies.”_

_“They were happy.”_

_“Because you weren’t there. Don’t you see? You ruined everything. Even human, you’re not half the woman Miranda was. Hardly worthy of seeing Jonas.”_

_Gideon counted backwards from ten like Jax had taught her. Deep breaths. Deep breaths._

_“Everything bad that ever happened started with you.”_

_“It started with the Time Masters!” she argued fruitlessly._

_He smiled coldly. “And where did you come from?” he asked. “Rotten fruit from a rotten tree.”_

_“I’m not like them!”_

_“Who blew up the Vanishing Point? Who tortured Miss Tomaz? Who?!”_

_“Me,” she whispered, voice breaking. “I did.”_

_“Evil. Just like the rest of them.”_

_Sometimes, she thought he was right._

Normally, she was safe in her dreams. Normally. But sometimes, he sneaked up on her in there too.

_“I love you,” she whispered to him, kissing him again._

_“Liar.”_

_“Excuse me?” she grinned, expecting him to tease her back._

_“If you’d really loved me, you wouldn’t have let me die.”_

_Gideon’s blood ran cold. “Wha-”_

_“You didn’t even try. You let me die.”_

He wasn’t Rip, he wasn’t. Except sometimes, she thought he was.

* * *

“What do you want?” Gideon screamed. Her eyes were bloodshot from all the crying, the alcohol she’d drank to keep the visions at bay had now led to a horrible hangover. “Just leave me alone,” she cried. “Please, please, leave me alone!” She sobbed and pulled the blankets around her, thinking if she concentrated hard enough he’d leave.

Rip walked up next to her by the bed and got down on one knee. Gideon waited for the latest tirade of insults. Instead he reached out and cupped her cheek, tutting softly. “Oh, Gideon,” he whispered.

“You don’t touch me. You can’t touch me. You’re not real,” she whispered. Were her visions getting worse? A tactile component? Her brain must have been splitting in two.

“I am real.”

“You’re not. You-you’re dead. It was my fault. He said so.”

“Who did?” the ghost demanded.

“You.”

“Gideon.”

She shook her head, counting backwards from ten. He wasn’t real. It was a trap. He would hurt her. He wasn’t real. Her Rip, her wonderful Rip-

“Gideon, look at me,” he said softly but steadily.

Gideon dry sobbed and opened her eyes to him.

“I am real. I am alive and none of it was your fault. Do you understand me? None of it!”

“I don’t deserve to be alive,” she whispered. “Not when Jonas and Miranda-”

“You’re not worthy of their names!”

Gideon gasped at the man in the corner. Rip. Another Rip, like a hologram, while the one in front of her was solid. Oh, she had gone mad. Truly mad.

“Gideon, look at me.” The Rip in front of her held her face, forcing her to focus only on him, despite how the cruel Rip tried to gain her attention. “Who’s there?”

“You,” she whispered. “It’s you.”

“It’s not me. I’m here, in front of you. I would never hurt you, my best friend.”

“He’s a liar, can’t you tell?” the translucent Rip said harshly. “Why would I ever be friends with you? You’re nothing.”

“What’s he saying?” Rip asked calmly.

“That-that you’re lying. We’re not friends. We can’t be. I-I’m nothing. I’m not worthy-I-”

“You are everything,” Rip said fiercely. He stood up and turned on the lights in the room with a clap of his hands. “Where is he?”

Gideon cried and raised her hand, pointing at the corner. Rip turned in the direction, shielding her, and glared.

“Leave,” he commanded. “Gideon is mine. I will always protect her. She is deserving, kind, intelligent, and the best of me. I am honoured to know her and I will not have you putting such horrible thoughts in her head. Leave!”

Gideon closed her eyes and counted back from five. She opened her eyes and gasped. The spectre was gone, but the Rip in front of her remained.

“You’re here,” she whispered.

“I’m not leaving you again,” he promised, taking her hand and squeezing. Gideon stared at their interlocked hands in awe. “Is he gone?”

Gideon nodded slowly. “A-are you real?”

“Very.” He cupped her face again. “Sorry it took so long.”

“But how-”

Rip nodded down at his Time Courier. “Long story. But I think yours is even longer. You’re human now?”

She nodded. “I know I don’t deserve it. I’m sorry.”

Rip frowned. “Did he tell you that?”

She nodded again.

“What else did the demon tell you?”

Gideon bit back on her words but the dam broke and she cried again. “I’m nothing. I’m evil. I-I didn’t deserve Jonas. Didn’t deserve you. It was all my fault. You died because of me. Hated me. I’m worthless.”

Rip stared at her for a long moment before engulfing her in a gruff hug. A suffocating type of hug. The type of hug that Jax and Ray would give her on her good days. That Teeny would give her before the ghost ruined it. The loving type of hug.

“It’s not true, none of it,” he said sternly. “Whatever that demon-”

“It’s me,” she said quietly.

“What?”

“I-I know it’s not real. That he’s not real. When I turned human, my mind, it wasn’t compatible with a human body, all that knowledge, emotions, synapses squeezed into a human brain. It broke. I broke.” She was broken.

“Surely, there’s a remedy?”

Gideon shrugged in his arms. “He never let me find one,” she whispered. “I-I tried. Couldn’t land when I wanted to. It was like I was losing time sometimes. I’d wake up and he’d be at the pilot’s seat, I’d be a hundred miles or years from where I wanted to be and he’d just laugh, say I deserved it.”

Rip swallowed noticeably. “Is that what I made you feel?” he whispered sadly.

Gideon shook her head. “It’s not your fault. It’s mine.”

“None of this is your fault.”

“Then there’s no fault to be had,” she said quietly as her thoughts grew more lucid. “His cruelty was not you. I know that…most of the time.”

“Jonas loved you, as did Miranda, as do I. Forever and always.”

“It’s hard to remember what’s reality and what’s in my head,” she whispered. Gideon brushed her fingers over his beard. “Are you sure you’re real?” He didn’t look the same as when he’d left.

“I am.” He covered her hand with his. “It’s been a while for me too, had to deal with a few personal issues before I came back to you. Wanted to be…worthy.”

“You are.”

“As are you. If I had known…I would have come back sooner.”

“Shame we don’t have a time machine,” she murmured.

Rip smiled and took her hand, kissing it gently. “Did he hurt you? Make you hurt yourself?”

“The _Waverider_ always stopped me before I could.”

“Good. He won’t get another chance. Not while I’m around and I’m not going anywhere.”

“What will you do? I’m broken.”

“You’ve been broken before and I fixed you then, as you did with me. Let me help you this time.”

But what if she didn’t deserve it?

Rip rested his forehead against hers. “I know what self-loathing feels like,” he whispered. “I know what it feels like to want to die. I know of the guilt and self-hate and self-doubt.”

“How do you stop it?” she pleaded.

“I let you in. Let you take care of me. Give me a chance. I know you are hurt, that you may not believe me, but let me prove it to you. I’ll always be here.”

“That’s usually my line.”

“Perhaps it’s time we switch roles then, allow me to be your safety net for once.”

“What if he comes back?” she whispered. It wasn’t an ‘if’, rather than a ‘when’, she knew.

“Then I’ll be here to scare him off. I will squeeze your hand so you remember which one is real. I will yell so loudly you won’t hear him. I’ll blindfold you so you won’t see him. I will tell you over and over every which way of how wrong he is about you. And then, together, we will make him disappear altogether.”

Gideon hiccupped. “Please be real.”

He kissed her forehead. “I am.” Rip helped her get more comfortable and held her in his arms, gently cradling her and rocking her to sleep.

“I love you.”

“I love you too.”

It was the second kindest thing she had ever heard him say. (The first was the ‘good morning’ he woke her up with the next day.)


End file.
